Good…then donate it to Water for Christmas tomorrow. So I’m sure most of you have heard of this little thing they call Facebook, right? Well someone started a “WFC” group on Facebook. That group is now up to 1000 members. By doing a little math (and I was never great at that anyway) one can figure out that if everyone donates $10 every Friday, we’ll build 2 wells. We have 6 more Fridays which would mean 12 wells and countless families.

Should you join us and donate $10 (at least!) tomorrow, who knows how many wells we can build. 42 million? I think that sounds good. So do it, seriously, check the couch cushions and do it. You’re bound to have it in the coats you haven’t worn since last winter. Check it out and then give it to WFC.

I was asked the other day what makes one choose to do something like this. It’s really quite simple for me and many other women and men around the world. Once you’ve been to Africa or held a baby in your arms who was/would’ve been affected by this; you don’t go back. You just don’t. You can’t, you won’t and you don’t want to.

4500 kids die every day because of lack of clean water. That is my Tariku. For all intents and purposes, he should be one of those statistics. But you can’t look at him and see that. Even if you haven’t been to Africa, you know a brother or a sister. Father or a mother. Son or a daughter. That is who these people are. They are a somebody to somebody.

So be a somebody to them. $20 saves an African for life. What does that $20 do for you?

That’s all I know.

Here, at Winona State University we have recently finished reading the Blue Death by Robert Morris. It is a book discussing the harmful water that, even here in America, we have. But to think that water in the United States is considered “dirty” when thousands of people die everyday because of dirty water in Africa, is crazy. So when my cousin Leslie told me about an opportunity to spread the awareness by dancing, how could I have said no?

So a week later, my friends and I gathered to gather to Shake It! We had such a fun time dancing ALL over Winona State University while explaining to people why we were dancing. So join in the Dance Party and Dance for Water!!

To dance is to celebrate life! We hear the song and feel the beat, much like our own hearts, driving us to move in ways that we haven’t moved before. The movement is sometimes beautiful, sometimes not. Yet we move, dance, feel and celebrate nonetheless because we are called to dance. And every dance should be celebrated, whether it be the slightest toe tap or the most glorious ballet.

And every life should be celebrated too, whether it be with dance, with love or with a simple, yet vital, gift of water.

1 year ago…

So today is kind of a big day around here. Today marks the one-year anniversary of our referral for Mr. Tariku Asamo Abiyu. You can read how it happened here. It’s baffling to think that was a year ago. When I think about that time my belly gets the butterflies it had then and my tears run down my cheeks like they did then. It was not so long ago that he came into my heart and settled there.

We obviously were not expecting it so soon. Just days after we turned in our dossier we were still hunkered down for a winter’s worth of waiting. We got that, though we were waiting for paperwork to go through and various other court issues that seemed to stall out the process to traveling. We originally had hopes of traveling to Ethiopia just after Christmas. Then it turned into Valentine’s Day. Soon after it was Easter. When Easter came and went we shot for my brother’s birthday (April 11) and that’s what we got. We traveled April 2nd and got back April 11th. One week, to the day, short of a year we went through the process.

When I talk to other adoptive moms who have brought their kiddos home about how much of a change we went through in that time no one can really believe it. One year, in most lives, can come and go with not much change. I can say this year was the biggest change hotflawedmama has seen in all my years. Including becoming an unmarried, pregnant college student all at one time. That was nothing compared to the last year I’ve had!

What a year, what a blessing, what a miracle. From the moment I heard Cindy’s voice on that phone I knew he was my son. I saw that picture of a scared little boy with little hope and knew we could give each other something we might not have believed in before. Hope, love of another country, of another child/mother, faith, miracles and a bond that is unexplainable yet so real.

I think about this day with mixed emotions, as I undoubtedly will on all of Tariku’s big days. I think of his Ethiopian family with love and humbling gratitude. One year ago, just a few weeks after they made the excruciating decision to give him a different life, all of our lives changed. It was official, for all of us. We would share him. Today marks the day where Ethiopian Asamos and American Klipschs united in prayer for this one baby boy who is a blessing to us both.

A real, true blessing. Happy referralvarsary my sweet boy Tariku!

So you all have enjoyed the dancing (what is up with the emails but no comments? Our dancers would love some feedback…positive of course!) This has prompted the making of another blog…a dancing blog. We have enough interest from friends of friends of friends that this way we can just post them as we go. YOU CAN TOO! You can dance, and you can spread the word, quite easily by the way. So just email/comment if you’re interested.

It’s been awesome to see the change in our dancers. They said yes as a favor to me, mostly. Then they dance and they felt it. They felt Water for Christmas take over their lives. They have emailed people they haven’t talked to in years; the professor they had in undergrad or the girl who kind of made their life really horrible for a time. And people like it. They like everything about “Water for Christmas” and how could they not?

Go to www.dancingforwater.blogspot.com. Soon enough you’ll see people from all over the country dancing for water. Tapping their toes and watching it ripple.

www.dancingforwater.blogspot.com it’s where dancing, and water, collide.

In other news…there are now t-shirts for sale! Go to www.w4ctees.blogspot.com to see them and place an order. Christa is a college student at University of Missouri in the Graphic Design program. She’s doing this for free, for water. She is awesome and talented and I love her now. So check it out and order them.

I started saying the word globalization a few years ago because it was not a mainstream word yet and I thought it would make me sound smart. Today, it’s nearly impossible to open a newspaper or turn on the television without a form of that word being used. Most of us have our own definition of globalization. To me, it means we are all connected and that every one of our actions has a rippling, exponential impact on the entire world.

Should we fear this change? Well, first of all it’s not really a change as much as us finally realizing what has always been true. Ignorance is indeed bliss, and we’ve enjoyed our bliss. But mass communication is erasing our ability to be ignorant. Ignorance is no longer a product of passivity, but is now an active choice. It’s difficult to escape the pictures, videos, and stories of injustice around the world. We cannot escape the fact that there are injustices that exist because we allow them to exist.

Lack of clean water is an unnecessary injustice.

If my neighbor across the street was dying because of a lack of clean water, would I do something? Most definitely. What about a person that lived a mile away from me? I hope so. 10 miles away? In another state? In another country? On another continent? When would I start making excuses?

When does a person stop being my neighbor? Globalization is teaching us that the answer is never.

Give water to your neighbor on another continent or tell your neighbor across the street about what is going on. And if you really want to raise awareness and have some fun, go to the Skybridge in Davenport, Iowa at 11:00pm on a Saturday night and have a dance party with random high school age kids (all of whom were intrigued by the idea of dancing for water and wanted to know about the wells being dug and what they could do to help. Hopefully, we’ll see their Dancing for Water video soon). I have to apologize to the pregnant girl who allowed me to rub her belly for the camera. We just couldn’t find a way to make it fit into the video.

“Can our prizing of each human life weaken with the square of the distance between us, as gravity does?” -Annie Dillard

You tired of the “Water for Christmas” posts yet? If you are…too bad. Slightly kidding.

Thought I’d post a few pictures of the kiddos and peeps to appease you crazies who haven’t drank the WFC juice yet. 🙂

Happy Sunday. Thanks for reading. Thanks for loving me despite (or because of) my uncontrollable passions. These are a few of them.

The kids watching their mom/aunt dance on the TV and trying it themselves.

My “Abie baby” as we say. Isn’t he beeeeautiful?

I forgot to tell you hotfawedmama (the blog) and (the person) got a new look. 🙂

This is just my entourage I run with…all the Klipschs and family who went to watch Andy play last night.

And the other Water for Christmas people who spoke to hearts last night. And moved people to donate a pretty good amount of money for the few hours we were there. It’s catching. Like wildfire. Like wildfire that changes and saves lives. It’s so rad.

As a social work major at a liberal, social justice-oriented university in Chicago, good causes and issues are never difficult for me to come by. But I think the difficulty really comes down to making these issues a part of our everyday lives, as opposed to something we read about in the BBC news and reply, “How sad…” I think that dancing for a cause like Water for Christmas is a beautiful idea not only in the fact that ANYone can do it, but it’s incredibly fun as well.

Helping our fellow human beings does not always have to be back-breaking, sacrificial work (although sometimes it does). At times it can be an hour of dancing around Chicago and talking to people, all the while reinforcing the fact that every decision we make–the clothes we wear, the coffee or soda we drink, and the food we eat, is so very connected to people on the other side of the earth. As is discussed by Nelson Mandela and Bishop Desmond Tutu, this is a term called Ubuntu, which means that everyone’s humanity is wrapped up in everyone else’s humanity, and until we realize this, there will be no true peace.

It was an honor to dance for Water for Christmas, and I hope people will not only donate, but begin bringing it and other issues into their everyday lives.

Since my hubby (isn’t he amazing?) gave me my soapbox back I’ll call attention to a few more tools we have.

One is this:

It’s one of those really great water bottles. If you’d like one, go over to Jody’s and pre-order then we’ll ship it to you and all of that.

The other is shirts. No image yet but imagine the coolest shirt you’ve ever seen…well, it’s better than that. Bias aside they are really cool and even better, they were created by a college student who drank the “Water for Christmas” juice and can’t get enough. A college student, don’t we all wish we would’ve found something like this at that age when we were full of passion, no money but lots of friends? I think we should all support her (and the cause) and buy shirts too. There will be adult shirts as well as children’s and the kid’s shirts might just motivate you to adopt/procreate had you not done so before.

Here is a picture of the cards we have for you. The ones that either say “I gave Water for Christmas” or “I want Water for Christmas”. Remember, if you want the pdf file for these cards just email me (tesileagh@hotmail.com) and you can consider it yours.

This is a picture of those bracelets (although they will come in bracelet form, not all like this) I was talking about. Didn’t Amy do a great job? Recycled glass from Ghana? Seriously great. Only $5 which is a steal by any standards. Go to her etsy shop for those. With each one of those you get an “I gave WFC” card so that the person you gave it to knows what in the world you’re talking about.

Now consider yourself equipped. Own this. Make it yours. Take credit for it, we don’t care. Just do it. And make everyone you know do it. Believe me, the first few times you bring it up casually in conversation is awkward. Then you do it more and more and it starts to get comfortable. Then, if you’re like me, you talk about Water for Christmas more than you talk about your kids and people start to look at you weird.

But really, that’s what we’re talking about. My kids. Our kids. Our brothers and sisters. GAS.

P.S. For those local folks, Andy Landers (a.k.a. Jody’s husband) and Ellis Kell are playing at the Redstone Room tonight at 8. We will be there talking about Water for Christmas and enjoying the great music. Meet us there…drinks on you.

I wish I could say there was some cinematic reason for JT and a ninja but unfortunately for those cinema majors, Tesi, there is not. I had a hat that looked like JT’s hat and Nick, the ninja, had a full jump suit that looked like a ninja and thus, Justin Timberlake and the ninja were born.

I wish I was as eloquent as any of the women in my life so I could write something that would touch the heart strings of the readers of this blog. I am however, just a simple man who loves his wife which is why I danced for her in the middle of a YMCA Camp in 40 degree weather. I would like to thank Nick for his participation as the ninja in our “Break Off.” I could not have done it without him.

Now comes the time when I stand on my wife’s soap box and discuss why I believe in this cause. I sure hope I do not need to tell you why this is important. I think it may be hard for some to get behind it because as lucky, blessed, blind Americans we have a tough time imagining it any other way. Let me paint a quick picture of another way for those that have not seen it before.

Imagine driving down a stretch of highway with nothing around you but horizon. It is a beautiful sight to see to say the least. As you drive down this highway you notice up ahead something on the road. As you pull up closer you notice it is a donkey, not the type you would see driving down an American highway in the midwest, but rather a donkey that weighs less than the average American man. You can count ribs, both scapulas, vertebrae, hips, and knee joints. You move quick to grab your phone to call the humane society to see if someone can come arrest this person who has treated this animal so badly but then you remember that you are in the middle of Africa and the idea of animal rights here is comical. Animals have the right to serve humans’ needs, not the right to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness as in your home town. You slow down next to this poor, disheveled looking animal and see that hanging off of the back of skinny old eeyore are two large yellow jugs. You can’t tell what is in the jugs but by the way the animal is carrying them, they must be full of something. Behind the donkey you now see the most shocking sight, the 5 year old child who is tending to the donkey to make sure it gets home. A 5 year old child who should be reading books and playing in a front yard or taking naps in a comfortable bed or just hugging their mom and dad is hitting this donkey on the right side and the left side, not hard mind you, but enough to let the donkey know to move over so it doesn’t get hit by the Land Rover that the white people are driving. As you pass and look at the child and donkey walk away from you in the rear view mirror of the Land Rover you start to imagine your oldest son Trysten, 5, leading a donkey down the highway carrying two large jugs on its back. I will repeat that so it hits home, YOUR 5 YEAR OLD IS WALKING DOWN THE HIGHWAY LEADING LIVESTOCK. Then you remember that the last time you saw any type of hut, home or person was probably 5 miles back. That five year old is walking livestock down the highway for five miles at the minimum. Then it hits you harder because you realize for that child to be where he is he had to walk there in the first place which means that that little 5 year old child with that 175 pound donkey will be walking 10 miles just to get these jugs. As you find yourself waking from this daydream of math about how far this child has walked, you see hundreds of people gathered on the side of the road ahead. As you drive past in your land rover with air-conditioning and leather seats you realize they are all huddled around one well pulling water out to fill up their 5 gallon jugs. Most of the people huddled around are children. Getting water for their families for the day, week, month? That is why Justin Timberlake had to break off the ninja.

I now step down off of my wife’s soapbox. Before I leave you, I want to give you one more challenge; tomorrow morning when you wake up and go to the bathroom, don’t flush; when you try to brush your teeth, don’t wash your toothbrush off, don’t take a shower, don’t drink coffee, don’t shave, don’t give the dog water, don’t do anything until you send your 5 year old child down the highway to get water for the day. When that child gets back after the 10 mile hike down the highway where Land Rovers are flying by driven by people that looking nothing like your 5 year old, then you can flush the toilet, brush your teeth, drink your buna (coffee in Ethiopia), shave to look nice and of course give water to the dog that is a part of the family. But remember, you only have about 10 gallons of water for the day, so use it wisely.

Please give water for Christmas, don’t get comfortable in the blessings you have been giving. Make yourself so uncomfortable that giving money to this cause seems like the least you can do.

Soap box is now officially turned back over to my wife.